In the prior art the citizen of a country faces many daunting obstacles in exercising the right to vote in the local, state or national elections. The prior art system generally requires that the individual citizen by physically present at the polling station and exercise the right to cast the ballot in the confines of the voting booth.
In recent times, the ability to cast the vote by choosing the absentee ballot method is being made more available for a number of reasons that include reduced cost to the county and fewer and fewer polling workers and places being available each year in a proximate location to the voter. However, the absentee ballot method requires that the election authorities prepare and send the ballots by postal means early enough for the citizen to receive the ballot. The absentee ballot method further imposes an undesirable constraint on the voter by requiring that the ballot must be physically returned by the postal means to the county registrar before the polls close, which generally means at the end of the normal final delivery time of the polling day.
The prior art absentee ballot method thus imposes an additional and undesirable requirement on the voter who chooses this method of voting, requiring the voter to select and cast the vote well in advance as compared to other citizens who physically vote at the polling station and are thus able to make their choice at the very last minute. It is imperative that the latest and best information is available to the voter at all times for the voter to make an informed choice. In a dynamically changing world, the fame, fortune, the positions on the issues and general information about the candidate is fast changing and so are the world events. Hence, there is an acute need to enable a system that allows the voter to cast the vote in a timely manner of the voters choosing, during the approved balloting window as determined by the election authorities. Additionally, disabilities, infirmities, time off from work, transportation and other constraints prevent the voter from easily exercising the inherent right to vote enshrined in a vibrant democracy.
In addition, there is another distinct difference between the absentee ballot method and the methods used for casting the vote at a polling station in the voting booth. The voting systems used in the voting booth are machine based whereas the absentee ballots are punch card based. There is a transition underway to touch screen enabled voting machines as the punch card method is now considered as error prone due to hanging chads and other limitations that are quite well known after the US presidential elections of the year 2000. The number of absentee ballots being cast is significantly high and moving higher every election period. Consequently the absentee ballots represent the margin for victory or defeat. Yet, as stated in here the inability of the absentee voter to exercise the right to vote at the desired time and the related lack of timely information further coupled with the differences in the methods of the actual ballots makes the entire voting process error prone and shakes the very foundations of democratic choice and governance irrespective of the voters party affiliation.
In the prior art the voters speak and read different languages. The election authorities are required to print and provide voting information and ballots in a plurality of languages at considerable expense. In addition, the voters that speak minority languages are often intimidated by the process and tend to participate in the voting in elections at a lower participation level.
In addition, the level of participation in most elections is far less than desirable. Consequently, the outcome of some elections may be determined by very few voters with the absentee votes being a significant factor in the election outcome. Yet, for a democratic system to reflect the views of the electorate, a significant majority of the eligible voters must participate and exercise their vote in a fully informed manner with convenience and relative case.
The prior art touch screen enabled fixed in place voting machines are a definite improvement over punch cards but do not address the issues highlighted above, especially the mobility issue. In addition the touch screen enabled voting machines of the prior art are not directly connected to the servers nor are they operating in real time. It is therefore anachronistic, that as we move very fast into a highly connected digital world, the very means of exercising our right to vote is constrained by methods and systems that do not keep pace, are antiquated and prone to error and legal challenges. In addition, the special recall elections enable the participation of a very large number of candidates on the ballot leading to confusion and the difficulty of selecting the candidate desired by the voter.
The prior art relies on voting machines that have removable memory cards and a built in hard drive and a means for activation of the voting machine by use of an activation card issued to the voter by the polling personnel. The memory cards are collected by the election officials and inserted into computers that then read the data from the cards. In the prior art the votes/voting data then is hand delivered to the county election office or the data subsequently transmitted over a telephone line. In the event a recount is requested the county officials recount the data from the memory cards. In the event a hand count is requested, the county election officials take a print out and calculate by hand from these prints outs. Consequently this archaic and elaborate process is fraught with the potential for errors and even fraud. As an example the level of redundancy to the memory card is only the hard drive in that particular voting machine. This is only a low level of redundancy and fraud protection. In addition in the prior art the voter is not enabled to receive a print out of the way the votes were cast which is a limitation. Therefore the present invention addresses a real world problem that requires a solution and solves the problem by novel means by fully leveraging the power/databases of the mobile devices, the availability of wired or wireless connectivity and the power/databases of the trusted escrow servers.
The present invention in a unique and novel manner discloses the methods for solving these enumerated problems of the prior art and enabling the highly mobile electorate to cast the ballots in a manner that levels the playing field while enhancing the security and integrity of the election process utilizing one or more types of touch screen enabled mobile devices. The present invention also enables the casting of votes in commercial applications using mobile devices such as voting on various proxy matters of a company and other applications.